2023 Early Career Artist Award Recipients

Each year, artists from around the country apply for the Early Career Artist Residency (ECAR) Awards at Northern Clay Center. These awards allow a group of emerging professionals to maintain the momentum they have developed through their formal and informal education and artistic experiences, while challenging themselves to continue developing their work so they are able to forge their way in the world as artists.

Northern Clay Center remains proud to offer, and continue developing, the ECAR Awards to contribute to the advancement of the field of ceramic art by providing formative opportunities for makers who are early in their careers.

NCC’s programming is immeasurably enriched by the annual contributions of new and creative energy brought to our studio community by these early career artists. The 2023 award recipients include artists from the full spectrum of contemporary ceramic arts.

NCC is proud to support and highlight these six recipients as part of our mission to support artists at all stages of their careers.

Early Career Artist Residency Awards

ECAR Awards provide a furnished studio for one year with 24/7-hour access, a material and firing stipend, a group exhibition in January of 2025, employment and professional development opportunities, features in NCC’s sales gallery, and other opportunities. The BIPOC Studio Fellowship provides additional support to the awardee including the development of networking opportunities in the field, help arranging mentorship opportunities, and financial support to help offset the cost of living for the artist. This year, the panel of three jurors awarded the Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowships to both E.C. Comstock (Boise, Idaho) and Harry Malesovas (Woodfin, North Carolina), the BIPOC Studio Fellowship to Akshar Patel (Tallahassee, Florida), and the Fogelberg Studio Fellowship to Carley Holzem (Mosinee, Wisconsin).

E.C. Comstock

E.C. Comstock is a ceramic artist who most recently lived and worked in Helena, Montana at the Archie Bray Foundation. They graduated from The University of Utah (Salt Lake City) in 2022 with an Honors BFA emphasizing ceramics, and focused their thesis work on the applications of new materialism to contemporary ceramics. Her process centers the dusty, perverse, and devotional forms that intimacy with material takes on. She delights generating a range of static and relational works, reaching across disciplines while perpetually returning to clay as a vital community. Comstock has exhibited work at the Utah Statewide Annual, Carbondale Clay Center (Colorado), and at Pratt Institute’s Pratt Manhattan Gallery (New York). They have performed in Berlin (Germany), Salt Lake City (Utah), and Bakersville (North Carolina). where they worked at Penland School of Craft. When away from the studio, Comstock enjoys stumbling around fields and trails or reading with a stout in hand.

Additional work by Comstock can be found on Instagram at @pants.gif.

Carley Holzem

Carley Holzem is a potter from Mosinee, Wisconsin. Most recently Holzem graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Stout (Menomonie) with a BFA in ceramics. Holzem’s work focuses on thrown porcelain sets of pottery meant for two or more people to share meals. Holzem believes that the experience of life can be enhanced in the simplest of ways by bringing presence and purpose to what are typically known as mundane tasks. Bringing meaning to repetitious actions creates a ceremony to look forward to every day. The love language of Holzem’s pots is to bring people together through food and quality time. These sets are a simple experience